For this post I want to focus on the complement to “Catalina Neon”—a Laureate project called “Wordstreet Champions and Brave Builders of the Dream.” Both have wonderfully playful names—the result of brainstorming sessions with the Laureate and the PLC staff that can only be described as magical—and share an ambitious goal: to transform the way primary and secondary school students encounter poetry. In the case of the latter project, the focus is on the nation’s third-largest school district.

Three times this academic year—in September, November, and February—Juan Felipe and I have traveled to Chicago to meet with high school English teachers from across the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system. We’ve gathered at the Poetry Foundation’s downtown headquarters, and we’ve all worked together to imagine how to teach poetry better to freshmen—who are in a transitional moment in their schooling, and for whom poetry might be a powerful tool for expression, for engagement, for comprehension.

Our gatherings with CPS teachers, in day-long professional development sessions, have been both rewarding and intense! Juan Felipe has found numerous ways to inspire the teachers, through exercises that push them to reimagine poetry (for instance: two rows of teachers face each other and chat with their counterpart in the other row; individual teachers walk between the rows, with a notebook in hand, and write down snippets of the conversations they catch—the basis for a poem) and insights into his own writing process. On the latter, our Laureate walked the teachers through his poem “I am Merely Posing for a Photograph”—he showed how lyric poetry can be a process of imaginative negotiations with Keats’s “Negative Capability” that mirrors the way we think and feel our way through a moment. On our last visit, Juan Felipe talked with Poetry magazine Assistant Editor Lindsay Garbutt about revisions—to poems published in the magazine, as well as poems like “@ The Crossroads: A Sudden American Poem” and others he has written recently, that respond to news of gun violence.

Herrera leads a brainstorming activity with CPS teachers at the Poetry Foundation.

Over the years, I have been lucky enough to work on a number of ambitious initiatives—initiatives that seek to bring new audiences to poetry as well as highlight the art’s importance to any and all who encounter it. However, nothing has felt as important as “Wordstreet Champions and Brave Builders of the Dream.” This project offers the Library, the Poetry Foundation, and really the country the opportunity to not only see poetry’s impact on teachers and students—which we also saw in Laureate Natasha Trethewey’s “Where Poetry Lives” segment with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit—but to measure that impact district-wide, in ways that will help convince administrators nationwide that poetry is integral to students’ development. If we can empower teachers to be poetry ambassadors (and I believe our project’s participating teachers are just that!), my dream is to one day offer students from coast-to-coast the opportunity to learn what I once did: that poetry will help you see the world more vividly and deeply, understand how to make meaning in new and beautiful ways,
and contend with those moments in which no other way of speaking will work.

The following post is part of our monthly series, “Literary Treasures,” which highlights audio and video recordings drawn from the Library’s extensive online collections, including the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature. By showcasing the works and thoughts of some of the greatest poets and writers from the past 75 years, the series advances the Library’s […]

The following cross-post was written by Nuzhat Khatoon, South Asia Specialist, Asian Division. It originally appeared on the 4 Corners of the World blog. My Recollections of Rabindranath Tagore’s Works My main recollection of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) lies not in his poetry, music, dramas, novels, or paintings, but rather with his “Jana Gana Mana” (Thou […]

Love is in the air, friends. Whether you’re a Valentine’s Day enthusiast or cynic, we hope you’ll join us today in a poetry lovefest for our four Laureates born in February: Elizabeth Bishop was born on February 8, 1911, in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was the 8th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry from 1945-1950. She is […]

It’s been a few months since we brought you news from the Galactic Poetry Cosmic Library, where Catalina Neon and her dog, Tortilla, have been waiting for instruction from second and third graders around the country. Since we know you’ve been on the edge of your seats just as we have, we’re especially excited to […]

The following guest post is by Anastasia Nikolis, a graduate student intern in the Poetry and Literature Center and a PhD candidate in the English department at the University of Rochester. There’s a history of poems responding to particular events and specific dates—we call these occasional poems—but it is rare for a poem to include […]

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